Whats up?!

[Dylan]

My Grey's Anatomy post was locked because "there was already another one". Does that mean that there can be only one post about a subject? I think that it is a little... stupid.

[Uncle Xyzzy]

The forums become cluttered if multiple topics covering the same information are simultaneously present.

For instance, if everyone who wants to post a photo makes a seperate thread, we have dozens of basically identical threads. So instead, a single thread has been made for all user photos.

I'm sure there's some technical reason concerning memory usage that the admins could divulge, but on that matter I haven't the foggiest.

[Nessa]

My Grey's Anatomy post was locked because "there was already another one". Does that mean that there can be only one post about a subject? I think that it is a little... stupid.

You've hit the nail on the head. We have a 'one thread per subject' policy because otherwise there'd be three or four threads all talking about Greys Anatomy. Information can be repeated, the threads start to get cluttered up, people get confused, 'well which Greys Anatomy thread do i want to post in?'

Its just a lot less confusing and messy to simply keep it all in one thread.

[ahoteinrun]

My Grey's Anatomy post was locked because "there was already another one". Does that mean that there can be only one post about a subject? I think that it is a little... stupid.

In the future if you have a problem like this, rather then complaining like this why not politely contact the mod who locked your thread. There was a lock note in it, so make use of that. It's hardly 'stupid' either, for the reasons stated by Nessa above. It keeps things cleaner and sharper and it's much easier to find things. Threads occasionally get repeated if they get old and dissapear, and nobody minds that but in general we try to keep one main thread going on a subject at a time.

[Dylan]

From now on I will go ahead and do a search and see if someone is already talking about it. If I happen to miss it, the mod could kindly explain to me, not just lock it.

[ahoteinrun]

From now on I will go ahead and do a search and see if someone is already talking about it. If I happen to miss it, the mod could kindly explain to me, not just lock it.

Threads get locked.
It happens. It happens to everyone. It's happened to me. It happens.
It's not that we're trying to attack you. We're doing our jobs. We don't allow multiple threads. We will explain to you in thread, and if you wish, you may PM us and ask us why we did what we did if the reason is not clear to you on the thread that we locked.

[pipsqueeek]

The idea is that no one should be posting in it anyway, since all the posts should stay in the topic that was already there, so locking the new one makes it impossible to post there and reduces confusion.

[TDG]

From now on I will go ahead and do a search and see if someone is already talking about it. If I happen to miss it, the mod could kindly explain to me, not just lock it.

The mods will usually (if not always) explain why a thread was locked on a post or an edit before they lock the thread. The only exceptions are when the post is something blatantly and deliberately breaking the rules, in which case the thread may be deleted or locked without bothering to explain why as its obvious.

This is their way of explaining what went wrong. Its not placing blame, its not insulting or harrasing you, all it is is explaining why the thread was locked and usually pointing you in the right direction (most explanations will link to the appropriate threads)

We lock threads in order to stop the discussion continuing on in that thread. Sometimes (on the rare occasion we miss it for a while), mods will merge the two threads together to keep the discussion in one place. So when you ask for us to explain it to you rather than simply locking it, we can't. If we did just explain it to you, people would see that topic and post on it, then we'd have to explain it to them and so forth. We do our best to explain it when we lock threads, but sometimes we just assume people know the rules as intimately as we do.

For future reference, the rules do state that

You should then make sure nobody else has already started a similar topic which you could post your message in. If not, you are free to post

Please don't take offense to a moderator locking your thread for this reason, it keeps the clutter down in a forum. You are free to post in the other thread, there's nothing stopping you from doing so. It just means forum-users don't have to search through 4 or 5 similar topics to find where they should post.

Its nothing personal, its just house-keeping

[Nessa]

I'm not sure what else can be said on this subject, your questions have been answered in detail, so I'm gonna go ahead and lock this thread.